Clubbed to Death (20 page)

‘I don’t have your imagination, ’ said Amiss. ‘So for the purposes of this exercise I’m eliminating Chatterton and Glastonbury. Now, judging by what you told me earlier, Ellis, Fishbane sounds like the next candidate to go out.’

‘I’d agree,’ said Milton. ‘He seems too sane really. It’s a strange thing to say about a man whose libido is so out of control, but he seems psychologically very well balanced. At least that’s how he came across. It’s not as if murdering the Admiral was a sensible course of action. It was essentially an hysterical solution to a problem which could have been resolved in other ways. Ellis?’

Pooley nodded. ‘So we’re looking at Blenkinsop and Fagg.’

‘That’s difficult again,’ said Milton. ‘Blenkinsop is being extremely co-operative, and while I admit that his conversion into an upright citizen seems to have come with indecent haste, nevertheless, he was oddly compelling.’

‘It will be enlightening to see if his new-found honesty runs to incriminating himself in any way,’ observed Amiss. ‘Hadn’t Meredith-Lee found him with his hands in the till?’

‘Indeed,’ said Milton. ‘I deliberately didn’t bring that up yet. I’m giving him a chance to reveal his bona fides.’

‘But essentially we’re talking Fagg, aren’t we?’ said Amiss.

‘The trouble with him,’ said Pooley, ‘is that he never seems to keep his mind on anything. Bit hard to imagine him seeing anything through.’

‘Well, he saw the provender committee through pretty well.’

‘Not the same thing,’ said Milton. ‘The murder needed a cool head – not the first quality I would attribute to the Colonel.’

‘No chance that they’d have conspired to bribe Ramsbum or Gooseneck or someone to do it for them?’

‘Out of the question,’ said Pooley mournfully. ‘Ramsbum was on duty that whole afternoon. There’s no question about it. He just didn’t have time. And Gooseneck has an alibi as well.’

‘Which is?’

‘He was with Sunil.’

‘With Sunil?’ Amiss was incredulous. ‘What were they doing? Do I dare ask?’

‘Well, they claim to have been in the Card Room all afternoon talking about the romantic poets.’

‘Get me another whisky, for God’s sake,’ said Amiss. ‘Everything just gets more ridiculous.’

‘You’re telling us,’ said Milton. ‘Absolutely everyone’s been questioned now and we still have only five with a motive as well as an opportunity.’

‘How many others had an opportunity?’

‘The two Pakistani cleaning ladies,’ said Milton. ‘A Chinese waiter who’s been with the club for a week. A Turk who’s been there for ten days and the club handyman.’

‘He’s deaf and dumb,’ said Amiss.

‘Quite,’ said Milton. ‘Ellis will no doubt wish to offer this as a motive, but I can’t see it myself. How, for instance, would he have gone about getting the dynamite?’

‘Stop taking the piss,’ said Pooley.

Milton blinked in mild surprise at this uncharacteristic leap into the demotic.

‘Of course,’ said Amiss helpfully, ‘he could be pretending to be deaf and dumb. How long has he worked at ffeatherstonehaugh’s, Ellis?’

‘Thirty years,’ said Pooley, grinning. ‘I doubt if he could have kept up the masquerade for that long.’

‘Therefore,’ said Milton, ‘since there appear to be only five possibles – all of whom we have decided are improbables – we’re going to have to work quite hard. Quite apart from whatever Blenkinsop comes up with, I’m going to get my chaps tomorrow to get going on a major investigation into the backgrounds of all these people. Money, military records, careers, anything shady, usual sort of thing. And of course we’ll have to go over all the old ground on timings and opportunities for both the Trueman and Meredith-Lee deaths.’

‘I don’t feel I’m being much use,’ said Amiss. ‘All I’ve given you so far is a little local colour.’

‘You’re looking for praise, aren’t you Robert?’ said Milton. ‘You know it helps to know what to expect, and who’s acting in character and who’s acting out of character, and all that sort of thing. Anyway, it’s early days. You may yet have the opportunity to find some incontrovertible evidence that will crack the case.’

‘Mmmm,’ said Amiss. He was relaxing over his whisky and enjoying himself. ‘I see it all,’ he said dreamily. ‘I’ll catch Chatterton red-handed tap-dancing on the gallery. Or will it be overhearing Glastonbury delivering crisp instructions to Fagg about what to do with the detonators left over from their last operation? Fishbane, perhaps, will have been wildly in love with the Admiral’s paramour, while Blenkinsop… What am I going to get on Blenkinsop?’ He took another sip of whisky and gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling.

There was a ringing sound from Milton’s suitcase. ‘1 wish these bloody mobile phones had never been invented, ’ he said as he fished it out. ‘One never has an excuse to be free. Yes,’ he said rather testily. His face changed as he listened. ‘Right, Sammy,’ he said, ‘I’ll be right there.’ He slammed the phone down and said, ‘Fuck.’

‘Fuck what?’ asked Amiss.

‘My own stupidity mostly. I didn’t think to put a guard on Blenkinsop.’

‘You don’t mean?’

‘I do. Sunil found him ten minutes ago. Dead in the corner of the library.’

‘How?’

‘Apparently all he said was that he didn’t know how he’d died, but it looked unpleasant. Come on, Ellis, we’ve got to get there. You’ll have to go separately, Robert. What are you thinking? You’ve got a very faraway look in your eye.’

‘I’m trying to decide if reducing it to four is a silver lining,’ said Amiss.

‘Only if he’s been murdered,’ said Milton. ‘Come on. Let’s go and find out.’

It was midnight before Amiss, back in uniform and trying to look official, was able to get any inside information. The police and their cohorts – photographers, finger-printers, pathologists and the rest – had drifted away; the corpse had been removed. Amiss had had his fill of the terrified squawking of foreign servants and the lamentations of old retainers.

‘One of the old school,’ Ramsbum kept intoning. ‘God knows what’ll happen to us now.’

If Ramsbum had been a human being Amiss might have suspected that he was seriously feeling grief. Blitherdick, usually a man of few words, had become lachrymose about Blenkinsop’s enjoyment of a good wine. Amiss had to restrain his impatience, knowing as he did that a distinguishing feature of Blenkinsop was that he had enjoyed any wine, as long as there was enough of it. Gooseneck had been unsentimental, but a little sad.

‘Every man’s death diminishes us, Robert,’ he observed, ‘and I’m sorry that he should die now when he seemed at last to be recovering his dignity.’

Both he and Amiss had spent a considerable time comforting Sunil, who had been throwing up on and off for over an hour. There had been no opportunity to get from him an on-the-spot report of what had happened. Chatterton, Fagg, Fishbane and Glastonbury were huddled together in the Smoking Room, from which each of them had been extracted for a brief conversation with Milton. They kept ordering more brandy and all seemed genuinely upset. Blenkinsop had after all, as Fagg remarked, ‘been one of us – not a damned outsider.’

A sense of mortality seemed to hang heavily on them. Their conversation was desultory. Amiss hovered in the gallery, hoping to waylay an informant. Eventually, he was rewarded by the sight of Inspector Sammy Pike heading out of the library and off towards the gentlemen’s cloakroom. He shot after him at high speed.

‘Psst… Sammy!’

Pike turned round and smiled warmly. He looked Amiss up and down appraisingly and said: ‘Nice to see you again, Robert, but I’m glad the Super tipped me off you were here. I’d have got a nasty shock otherwise. By the way, I don’t think much of your tailor.’

‘Oh, shut up, Sammy. Beggars can’t be choosers. Now come on, give.’

‘Pathologist says it’s murder, skilfully carried out, he thinks, with a sharp blow from a cylindrical object driven upwards from the base of the nose. Apparently that drives a couple of bones into the brain. It’s a professional killer’s trick, I gather. Haven’t come across it myself before. Quick, but brutal.’

‘So what instrument was used?’

‘Dunno. It wasn’t left there and I can’t think what the chances are of finding it in a place this size. Still, we’ll get dozens of men crawling all over this building again.’

Out of the corner of his eye Amiss saw the Smoking Room door open. ‘Quick, Sammy, what about the information he was writing down for Jim?’

‘There was nothing there, I’m afraid. Nor in his room, nor in his office. Either he hadn’t started or whoever killed him took it away. That’s the likeliest, isn’t it?’

‘Thanks, Sammy.’

Amiss hurried towards the Smoking Room, out of which was emerging a by now familiar though no less bizarre procession. The four old men were obviously on their way to bed. Fishbane and Fagg came first, Fishbane’s six foot three inches of scrawny frame making an interesting counterpart to the roly-poly little Fagg, whose progress was retarded by his gouty limp. Amiss had a moment of sympathy for the old beast. It wouldn’t do much for anyone’s temper to suffer simultaneously from gout and piles, not to speak of bearing the life-long burden of being an unattractive midget. Fishbane nodded courteously, Fagg curtly. Amiss wished them goodnight and received civil responses. At least murder seemed to be a great improver of manners, he reflected. Behind came Glastonbury and Chatterton, but here there was a new development that Amiss found absorbing, for Chatterton had, that afternoon, been allowed to abandon his zimmer in favour of crutches and Glastonbury was therefore in a state of twittering panic.

‘Oh, my dear Cully, pray take care, take care. Those things are treacherous, and you’re not used to them. Please go more slowly. You mustn’t be so reckless.’

‘Boy, I’ve told you before, I’m used to crutches. Remember I had them twice before.’ He stopped for a moment, deep in thought. ‘Ah, yes. The first occasion was the fifth of September, it must have been. Certainly the first week in September, nineteen fifty. Don’t you recall? It was when I had that skiing accident in Switzerland.’

The memory of that sent Glastonbury into deep distress. ‘Oh, yes. I remember you telling me about that, Cully. That was dreadful, dreadful.’

Chatterton cut in. ‘The second occasion, of course, was when I was hit by a car in Monte Carlo on my third visit there…let me see, yes, it would have been twenty-seven years ago, three days before Christmas. So I’m quite good with crutches. There is no need to worry. Goodnight, Robert.’

‘Oh, yes, yes, yes. Goodnight, Robert,’ said Glastonbury. ‘Oh, dear. So disturbing. Everything so disturbing. Poor Pinkie. It’s quite dreadful, terrible, terrible. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, sir.’

Amiss observed with interest but without surprise that Chatterton was as good as his word. He swung along on his crutches like a veteran, his dapper form complemented by the fleshy majesty of Glastonbury’s. As they disappeared towards the lift a stampede of policemen emerged from the library and thundered towards the stairs. Milton and Pooley lagged behind. Sammy Pike reappeared and joined them and Amiss edged towards them, keeping an eye out for unwelcome observers.

‘We’re off, Robert,’ said Milton. ‘Nothing more to be done tonight. We’ll have to wait before we can be absolutely certain of the time and manner of death, but from what we know already, it looks, yet again, as if any of those old buggers could have done it.’

‘Nothing especially to look out for?’

‘Incriminating documents in Blenkinsop’s handwriting would be nice,’ said Milton.

‘And the murderer’s cylindrical object,’ said Pooley.

‘A crutch?’ suggested Amiss.

‘I thought of that, ’ said Pooley. ‘The circumference is about right, but apparently the object itself is too long. You don’t get the thrust.’

‘You’d be looking for something shaped like a truncheon or a torch,’ said Pike.

‘We’ll have some better ideas when the preliminary pathology report comes in tomorrow,’ said Milton.

‘Will you be coming here?’

‘I doubt if Ellis or I will be along tomorrow. Sammy will be running things. Give Ellis a ring before lunch-time and he’ll bring you up to date. Goodnight, Robert. And please be careful.’

‘I will.’

‘I’ll order some provisions for you tomorrow, Robert, ’ said Pooley.

‘You mean in case Blenkinsop’s successor puts us back on short rations? Well, that raises an interesting question. Who the hell is going to become the new secretary?’

‘If the murder rate speeds up,’ said Milton, ‘perhaps you might put in for the job yourself.’

‘I might be weary,’ said Amiss, ‘but I’m not suicidal.’

22

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It was a dreadful night. Sunil snored loudly and Amiss didn’t have the heart to wake him. It was bad enough, he felt, to be cast out by your family, be stuck working in ffeatherstonehaugh’s, and be spending all your spare time working for a degree, without additionally having the stress of falling over dead bodies: the boy needed his sleep. In any case, Amiss’s mind was racing, grappling with a situation devoid of any rational explanation. He desperately wanted to get up, make himself a cup of tea or get a drink and walk around and think; instead, he was trapped. Downstairs would be in darkness, so any light going on would attract the attention of the night porter. While the faded old creature who bore the main brunt of night duty would be too dozy to spot anything, Ramsbum was a different matter and Amiss was pretty sure that this was his night on duty. He could be absolutely guaranteed to report to Fagg in the morning that a servant had been out of bounds, and this was no time to get the sack.

The hours passed in fruitless speculation on one side of the room and loud snoring on the other. At around five, Amiss’s need for sleep triumphed over his good nature and he hurled a paperback in Sunil’s direction. Nothing happened. Four books later there was a grunt, a snort, a muttered ‘Oh, sorry’, and the noise stopped. Amiss cursed himself for a soft-hearted fool. Just because Sunil had had a nasty experience didn’t mean that his sleeping pattern would have changed. After tossing and turning for another while, Amiss fell into a deep sleep from which he was woken less than an hour and a half later by his alarm clock. To his chagrin, Sunil had disappeared. He washed and dressed quickly and was downstairs ten minutes before breakfast began, hoping for a quiet word with Gooseneck about Sunil’s condition.